Preview: Street Fighter X Tekken Hands-On

After almost ten years of falling away as a distant memory, it’s fun to see the Street Fighter series back and as a relevant titan in the fighting game genre once again, if not, the most relevant. After a solid run with Street Fighter IV and some of its characters sprinkled throughout a couple of the Vs. titles, the next move for the memorable fighters is against the characters of Tekken. I recently got to try out Street Fighter X Tekken, which is still a year away from release, so who knows what else they may throw in or add along the way. Now, it was hard to see how you can characters from two completely different fighting games and mix them up into one game, but I think they have found a good balance.

Street Fighter has always been heavy on the projectile throwing characters. Although we know they do have characters who are in your face and are grapple heavy, there is a reason why people are more prone to remember the iconic shouts of hadouken and sonic boom. So, how do the Tekken characters compensate for their lack of such special moves. Do they get their own special moves? The answer is no. Capcom has decided to keep the Tekken characters as they were, and, instead, given their own tricks. The Tekken characters have a wide variety of dodging moves, fake-outs, and pressure putting abilities. It really gets you on your toes, because if you’re not guessing where the next attack is coming from, you may be in a world of hurt — which brings me to the next big aspect of the game.

The combos in the game are ridiculous. I was still learning how to do these combos, but some that I saw pulled off were fantastic to look at. Oh, and by the way, the game looks gorgeous. So, each player gets to choose two characters from either the Street Fighter or Tekken side. Each character has a launcher that will send your opponent flying up in the air, and your tag partner will automatically come in to continue the combo or let them drop. Every character’s launcher is pulled off the same way, and can only be done once during a single combo. This means I can’t follow-up a launcher with another launcher. However, you can also tag once mid-way through a combo, which gives way to said ridiculous combos. It is definitely a blast fooling around with the combo system and discovering new moves and tricks.

You use 6 face buttons, like you do in Street Fighter IV, so there’s no worry about that being watered down in the technical department. The game, I believe, will be highly competitive, and lots of fun for beginners as well. The tagging system is like Tekken Tag Tournament where when one character gets knocked out, the whole team is finished, and that encourages plenty of tagging for obvious reasons.

The game so far looks and plays great. Can’t wait to hear about and play more of Street Fighter X Tekken leading up to its release.

Working on the DualShockers staff as both an editor and community manager since late 2009, François is absolutely no stranger to the videogame industry. He is a graduate from the City College of New York, and has his Bachelor of Arts in Public Relations and Advertising. His next step is to obtain his Master's degree at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. Before starting his career, François has been gaming since the age of 2 with Super Mario World, and he has never looked back since. Gaming may be his profession, but it has always been his passion.